Wozniak: Facts in Steve Jobs movie look 'atrocious' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/tech/innovation/wozniak-jobs-movie/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5

<comment><USER3> The neatest part of this article is where Woz talks about Aaron Sorkin's upcoming Steve Jobs film, which he is consulting on and says will "play out in three extended scenes, shot in real time, that depict Jobs at three product rollouts: the Macintosh, Jobs' non-Apple product NeXT, and the iPod."

Now that's something to look forward to.

<comment><USER4> Seems strange to leave out the iPhone product announcement, especially since the iPod announcement was pretty low key ( <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs> ), and was not an obvious hit at the event. Compare that to the iPhone announcement where everyone went wild right then and there, and truly felt like the culmination of Steve's vision of what computing should become (the iPod in retrospect seemed more like a side project that didn't really "mesh" with his general philosophy on computing).

<comment><USER5> I think the iPod is the spark of the Apple that we know today, and as such is momentous.

Given that Apple's stock was ~$9 when the iPod was announced and Apple is now the most valuable company, this really was the first step - and further - <USER2> pretty much know the rest of the history after that.

It would not necessarily make sense to skip the iPod and jump to the iPhone as it was an iterative revolution that made them what they are now.

Some of those steps in the iterations were obvious, some predictable, others surprising but all were mind-blowingly successful.

<comment><USER4> I agree the iPod was important to Apple's financial history, but I don't think it was particularly important to Steve (I understand I can't know this for sure), nor does it fit the narrative of what Apple brought to this world. I'm not saying that the iPod announcement should be left out, just that it shouldn't _end_ with it. If the movie's point is that this was the beginning of the turnaround for Apple's financial woes, then it misses the point of what Apple (and Steve) have been trying to do for computing since the beginning. I think this is a common mistake, and could be done even worse by ending the story with the announcement of the iMac for example. If the story focuses on the iPod as the "comeback", then it is really a laymen's interpretation of Apple history, and will be quite disappointing (of course I haven't seen the movie so for all I know there is a completely separate point they want to make which will be great for other reasons). However, if the point is to analyze Steve _the man_ behind Apple, then leaving out the iPhone is a bad start.

In a lot of ways, the iPod is the antithesis of the battle Steve and Apple have been metaphorically fighting. The software on the iPod was junk, it was very much a device in the spirit of the way things "used to be done", a product that would have felt equally at home under the Sony brand as the Apple brand. From the Mac to the iPhone and finally the iPad, you can see a clear vision of not having computers be generic hardware with forgettable software, but rather finely crafted hardware in _the service of_ amazing software. Apple's treatment of the iPod post-iPhone (and Fidel's subsequent leaving of the company shortly thereafter) are very telling.

I have to disagree whole heartedly that the iPod was a "step" towards the iPhone. The iPhone is very much in the "family tree" of the Mac, and not the iPod. The iPod was ultimately just a toy. Everyone at Apple knew this as well. The iPhone was _the next step_. Ending the story with the iPod is telling it through the eyes of a financier and not as a technologist or a philosopher or a student of Mr. Jobs. And under any interpretation its hard to argue that it is simply missing the end of the story.

<comment><USER6> At one point in the iPhone's development, there was an internal battle at Apple on whether to use the iPod OS, or a minified OS X. Many were skeptical that a desktop OS could run well on a pocket device. It seems an obvious leap in hindsight, but it wouldn't have been then.

The iPod also established credibility with the public that Apple could do great things beyond making shiny computers. The iPhone (and iPad) probably meant a good deal more to Jobs than the iPod, but I think it's clearly part of the lineage.

> a product that would have felt equally at home under the Sony brand as the > Apple brand.

Jobs admired the founder of Sony a great deal; as they say, this would be a feature, not a bug. :)

<comment><USER4> _> The iPod also established credibility with the public that Apple could do great things beyond making shiny computers. The iPhone (and iPad) probably meant a good deal more to Jobs than the iPod, but I think it's clearly part of the lineage._

So are a great number of other things that we can draw conclusions about. We could argue that the Apple laptops were incredibly important, as they were the first steps in making OS X run under "mobile conditions". In fact, you could say that the introduction of OS X itself should be on display because it is what runs basically everything Apple does now from desktops to phones to tablets to apple tvs. I could actually make an incredibly academically interesting argument that Pixar was crucial to everything else that happened at Apple because in many ways it restored the credibility of Steve Jobs, and made him fabulously wealthy. However, if you are making a movie that focuses on just 3 events in Jobs life, you probably would not choose the moment he decided to invest in Pixar. Any number of events and devices were precursors to the iPhone.

Supposedly this movie is going to be about him preparing for these announcements. He will perhaps be reflecting or ruminating about the importance of what he will present. Prior to the iPhone announcement, Apple and Steve had everything at stake in a way unlike any other event since the Mac, and certainly moreso than the iPod. Had the iPod failed, it would have been just another forgotten Apple consumer electronic, like the Newton or Apple printers. Yes, perhaps that would have then indirectly lead to a domino effect of other products not being created, the iPhone included. But with the announcement of the iPhone, the very meaning and philosophy of the company were put on display. I was on the original iPhone team, and I can distinctly remember the way he would talk about the iPhone before it was released, it meant something more to him. And if you are going to make a biopic about Steve Jobs, the iPhone _needs_ to be a part of that. Just watch him introducing the iPod, and then the way he introduces the iPhone. Think of it another way, if you could go back in time and talk to him before the iPod announcement or the iPhone announcement, which would you choose?

Again, I haven't read the script, for I know its covered in some other way. However, just from a surface understanding that it is just going to cover those 3 events in a vacuum, I don't feel very confident about this film. But I will of course reserve judgement until I see it.

<comment><USER6> Agreed that the iPhone announcement is clearly more significant than the iPod one. People forget that the latter was perceived as a dud on day one; the room was small, the fanfare was minor, and it was much more expensive than people were used to paying for music players. I was referring to the overall history of the product; the announcement itself does seem like a bizarre inclusion.

You're also spot-on about OS X. I'm excited that NeXT is going to be part of the film; Apple wouldn't have rebounded as powerfully without it. It's easily the most wildly successful flop in history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was clear when it was announced that this was going to be the inaccurate, sexy, mainstream Hollywood version of a Jobs film. It stars Ashton Kutcher for god's sake.

I think everyone on HN is unanimously looking more forward to Aaron Sorkin's film. Most of the mainstream non-tech-world Hollywood-Ashton-Kutcher audience has not seen the actual product announcements nor do they even know they exist. For most people, the iPod announcement was word of mouth and TV ads. Meanwhile a lot of the type of people who read HN somewhat worship the Steve Jobs keynotes. I know _I've_ watched nearly all of them.

In fact I'm sure there will be a spike in "everyone else" watching them for the first time if Sorkin's movie is popular and brings them to the mainstream. For now they've just been a total geek thing to indulge in. :)

<comment><USER8> Why would we look forward to Aaron Sorkin's film if we _don't_ want an "inaccurate, sexy, mainstream Hollywood version"? Did we forget _The Social Network_ that easily?

<comment><USER7> Aaron's won't be that. I don't think his goal is the same as was with The Social Network.

<comment><USER9> But Aaron Sorkin did write The Social Network. Any evidence to point that he is working on a truer rendition for the Jobs' movie ?

<comment><USER10> Well, Woz is involved, and he seems optimistic.

<comment><USER11> Woz has also been out of the picture in Apple since before the Mac. He's been an outsider for close to 30 years, and has publicly stated that he was not close to Jobs.

It's not clear that his involvement means much in terms of making it an accurate portrayal.

<comment><USER12> Yeah...but Woz was very close to Jobs pre-Macintosh. Considering Apple's early years consisted mostly of Woz, Jobs, and Mike Markkula, I think Woz would be essentially to understanding the early part of Jobs' success, without which the post-Macintosh days would've never happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sure it's not a biography but the issue is that it will be perceived as such by regular movie goers. That's the power of Hollywood as a propaganda machine. People will be referencing events from the movie as if they were 100% accurate. They will make character judgements; and on the long run those judgements will transcend from the movie to reality.

<comment><USER14> Zuckerberg found _The Social Network_ to be significantly less than 100% accurate, but perhaps a better movie because of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm disappointed in that unlike The Social Network, which had no other film as a reference to compare to, this film already has Pirates of Silicon Valley as a precedent. While Jobs didn't care for the film, Woz thought:

"The personalities and incidents are accurate in the sense that they all occurred but they are often with the wrong parties (Bill Fernandez, Apple employee #4, was with me and the computer that burned up in 1970) and at the wrong dates (when John Sculley joined, he had to redirect attention from the Apple III,not the Mac, to the Apple II) and places (Homebrew Computer Club was at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) ... the personalities were very accurately portrayed." (<http://www.woz.org/taxonomy/term/2>)

<comment><USER16> Jobs must have liked it somewhat though, otherwise he wouldn't have had Noah Wyle reprise the role in an Apple keynote:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os>

<comment><USER17> Looks to me like Jobs uses the entire exchange as a way of undermining Noah's performance in the movie:

 _"I invited him here today to see how I really act"_ etc

<comment><USER18> It's a fairly standard comedy pattern: start with a celebrity impersonation, then have the impersonated celebrity come out and critique the performance. SNL uses it a lot, e.g., (the real) George H. W. Bush coming on and critiquing Dana Carvey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unrelated to this article but more based on what I've read elsewhere - to me, this movie just doesn't seem very innovative, unlike the subject. It feels like the producers wanted to cram Steve's whole life into a one and a half hour film without any compromise. On the other hand, I love the idea of Aaron Sorkin's movie, with three scenes of Steve getting ready for important product announcements. I think that's a great compromise and much more in the spirit of Steve Jobs's work ethic.

Of course, I have not seen the movie, just basing this off of articles I've read :)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is like inception misrepresentation. An article about Wozniak condemning the accuracy of a movie, which is itself very misleading.

I was at the talk, and I can say first hand that the tone of the talk never came anywhere near the way this editorialized paragraph would suggest:

> "Totally wrong. Personalities and ... the ideas of computers affecting > society did not come from Jobs ... . His idea was to make a $20 PC board and > sell it for $40 to help people... build the computer I'd given away ... . > [H]e always saw a way to make a quick buck off my designs (this was the 5th > time). The lofty talk came much further down the line."

The theme was closer to how he and Jobs were a great team because he would come up with designs and Jobs always had a way to make them money from it even saying explicitly, "...and we'd always split the profit."

</comment><comment><USER21> I will be posting the full video of Woz's very informative and inspiring talk on YouTube with highlights as soon as it gets approved by legal. Hopefully that will be this Monday...

<comment><USER6> Please do. I never get tired of listening to Woz speak. :)

<comment><USER21> Here is the full Woz conversation! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIKTes4BzXo>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As atrocious is Kutcher's performance. The guy will ridicule Jobs legacy with his poor acting. I saw the trailer and it was awful. And the guy they choose to play Woz resembles more Hurley from Lost rather than Wozniak.

<comment><USER23> I knew Jobs personally, and I have to tell you, an accurate portrayal of his behavior by an acting prodigy -- or a straightforward documentary using real footage -- would do more harm to his reputation than a shallow script and modestly talented performer.

<comment><USER24> Why do you say that? I think the closer someone could get to portraying Steve Jobs, the better it would be.

<comment><USER23> > I think the closer someone could get to portraying Steve Jobs, the better it > would be.

Okay, if by "better" you mean more accurate and unvarnished, of course I agree. I was referring to those who want Jobs to be portrayed as a technological saint.

<comment><USER25> I don't want an accurate portrayal of Jobs. That would probably make for horrible entertainment. This is a movie that is clearly not intended to be accurate so much as entertaining, much like The Social Network. I would have much higher accuracy standards for a documentary.

<comment><USER23> In that case, we're talking about two different things. BTW I happen to agree that the film is meant as an entertainment, not a documentary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a shame. The truth of their relationship is entertaining and fascinating in itself. I suspect it would be even more so if Woz wasn't such a humble mensch and would rather be polite than talk trash. It's just a shame that he doesn't get more popular respect so that more people aspire to be like him...for every Jobs, we need someone as good as Woz

<comment><AUTHOR> The more I learn of Woz I'm more impressed. Like listening to him. I agree that he's a good role model But is his personality conducive to driving a business? It seems the tyrants are more successful.

<comment><USER26> Just a side note on the subject of "learning about Woz," If you haven't already, I highly recommend his book iWoz. it's a really interesting recounting of his early days as an engineer.

<comment> grey-area folklore.org also has some great early apple stories, including many about woz.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Vuze search rendered zero results for "jobs"+"sundance"

However, I was able to find a short clip from the film, here: [https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv- movies/kutcher-...](https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv- movies/kutcher-portrays-apple-founder-jobs-article-1.1248737)

Please let me know if you find a source of the full movie, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER28> It doesn't really matter. This isn't a biography or a documentary, this is entertainment. Was THE SOCIAL NETWORK true? No, it was entertaining.

The best you can hope for any biopic is that it won't distort positions unrecognizably far from reality, and perhaps it will inspire someone.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure why you draw a distinction between biographies, documentaries and entertainment.

The Social Network was not true. I'm pretty sure we would've been just as entertained by the truth.

The best we can hope for is that we learn something from the truth while simultaneously being entertained by it.

I'm not sure when we decided that we must sacrifice everything but the names, of those involved, at the altar of entertainment

<comment><USER4> I think you can make an even stronger argument in the case of The Social Network that what we got was a less entertaining story because of it. I think the story that was told was a much lazier one, forced to fit old prototypes and thus was simultaneously less entertaining and had less to teach. The story behind Facebook, and the people that participated in it, is probably pretty interesting, but instead we got the tired trope of "ostracized nerd channels social frustration to super ambition - only to find himself alone". The characters were flat and one sided, the lessons were obvious. The story has been told countless times already, it is boring, unrealistic, and doesn't leave much to learn from.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Demo Day, the results? - <AUTHOR>

ask YC: Demo Day, the results? <comment><USER2> The results are that every single startup has a pile of business cards from people who are interested (to a wildly varying degree).

Now we have dozens of additional demo days, pitching in front of the many people who gave us the aforementioned business cards. After that, haggling over term sheets. After that, lawyers. After that, money. After that, we actually have to build and grow a business (the hard part-- most of the funded companies will likely fail).

In short, the jury is still out-- and will be for years. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> The immediate result is that all the YC folks went out and got a few drinks. The rest will take a bit of time to settle.

</comment><comment><USER4> all 19 companies gave amazing presentations. I'm sure all will be spending the next few weeks talking to potential investors and figuring out how to take their businesses to the next level.

Expect to hear a lot more news about the companies from this batch - there are a lot of really amazing teams.</comment>


Show HN: Citizen – Real-time local crime alerts on iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> http://citizen.com <comment><USER2> I've been on the beta for a while, and I love the potential behind this idea. But the thing that's most interesting for me to see is if/how the conversations about transparency will evolve now that something you walk around with everyday is putting it physically in your face, and quite bluntly imo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Citizen is launching today after originally being released as Vigilante (for iOS only) back in October. Update from the team here: [https://medium.com/@CrimeNoMore/introducing- citizen-a8d2f3fa...](https://medium.com/@CrimeNoMore/introducing- citizen-a8d2f3fabf03#.ive89bp0p)</comment>


Sheryl Sandberg plunged from global icon to just another executive - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-went-from-lean-in-icon-to-face-of-scandal.html <comment><USER2> I mean if she left Facebook she'd could probably be a VC or something in the tech world... or maybe at a global nonprofit.. she'd be a top pick for a high profile government or academic appointment.

Overall, it'd probably be better for her brand to separate from Facebook. The constant negative news around Facebook and the upcoming 2020 election doesn't help things. Right now the news cycle might attribute a lot of FB issues to her though if she left so that would need to be managed...

Also, the #LeanIn movement also has some legitimate criticisms. So there's some legit hard work to do expanding her brand/movement to encompass all women.

</comment><comment><USER3> It feels like this article is trying to create a narrative based on the authors agenda. As if to say, if we can't get Facebook to change let's attack the reputations of the executives.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe because of this --> Sandberg may no longer be the female icon she once was to the outside world, but she remains the second-most powerful executive</comment>


Polymorphism and inheritance are independent of each other - <AUTHOR> http://accelerateddevelopment.blogspot.com/2012/06/polymorphism-and-inheritance-are.html

<comment><USER2> > Is the value of static type checking worth giving up the power of pure > polymorphism at runtime?

> Polymorphism is the ability to send a message to an object without knowing > what its type is.

This reads like it was written by a person who's only ever used Java and Ruby.</comment>


Tumblr Boots Anonymous Blogs - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/anonybloggers-be-gone-tumblr-boots-griefers-2009-2 <comment><USER2> "A snarky cathouse where everyone tears down everyone else anonymously "

Doesn't that describe the Internet in general? Seems that regardless the platform there is a lot of negativity due to the perception of anonymity.

</comment><comment><USER3> tumblr doesn't even allow comments. So this isn't all that surprising.</comment>


Solar energy has plunged in price – where does it go from here? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/whats-next-for-solar-energy/ <comment><USER2> There are two inflection points for renewables:

1\. Cheaper than NEW CONSTRUCTION of coal or gas 2\. Cheaper than OPERATING COST of coal and gas

We have passed inflection point 1 in the last couple years. That's why the predictions were off. As soon as we hit inflection point 1, new construction switches from goal and gas to renewables.

This will continue until we start getting instability problems, but cheaper storage (batteries or whatever) will ameliorate this.

The next inflection point will make the current rate of growth look slow. When renewables are cheaper than the operating cost (forget about paying back the capital), the entire coal and gas installed base becomes a stranded asset and it will be replaced at whatever rate we can build out renewables.

</comment><comment><USER3> I for one would not mind mandatory installations on new buildings within the bay area (East Bay).</comment>


Gabriel's Horn - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_Horn <comment><USER2> Also check out the Menger sponge, which has infinite surface area and zero volume: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge)

<comment><USER3> I think Sierpinski's triangle may also be of interest here, which, contrastly, approaches zero surface area: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle)

<comment><USER4> not constrast; it's analogous, in lower dimension.

Sponge has infinite area and 0 volume. Sierpinski's triangle has infinite perimiter and 0 area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've thought it was paradoxical that infinitely long curves could have finite integrals ever since I first took calculus. For example, the integral of 1/x is |ln x|.

I wonder why it takes three dimensions before people start getting upset.

<comment><USER6> Or even just a convergent infinite series. Infinitely many positive numbers that sum to a finite number.

<comment><USER7> People don't tend to find that unintuitive. The Greeks had a nice geometric example in a square of side length 1:

        ┌┬┬─┬───┬───────┐
        ├┘│3│   │       │
        ├─┘-│   │       │
        │ 64│   │       │
        ├───┘   │       │
        │       │       │
        │ 3/16  │       │
        │       │       │
        ├───────┘       │
        │               │
        │               │
        │               │
        │       3/4     │
        │               │
        │               │
        │               │
        └───────────────┘

3/4 + 3/16 + 3/64 + 3/256 + ... is easy to visualize as successively filling in three quarters of an ever-smaller residual square. Intuitively, no matter how finely you detail it, you're never going to stop fitting inside the original area-1 square.

edit: better text art

<comment><USER8> Now squeeze the top-left piece so it's half as wide but twice as tall (i.e. the same height as the full rectangle), and do this recursively. Same area, right? Then stack the L shapes on top of each other. Then you have one of these horns.

<comment><USER7> Huh? The horn is a three-dimensional object; the square exists in 2-space. You can't make the horn from pieces of the square even if you allow deformation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always describe this to "non-mathy" people when they ask what could possibly be fascinating/beautiful/etc about math. I'd like to think I've changed at least a mind or two.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what sound it would make. Can we model such a horn assuming _a_ from, say, 1cm to some value _p_ and simulate it?

<comment><USER11> Depends on how many of the laws of physics you want to ignore. The horn has infinite length and sound waves have a finite speed (assuming sound is defined as the usual compression wave through a medium). So a sound wave starting at the narrow end would take an infinite amount of time to reach the other end. But the sound it self shouldn't be anything special.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of a Putnam problem from a few years back, was something along the lines of:

Construct a set of discs in R^2 s.t. no infinite straight line can be drawn without intersecting at least one disc, and the sum of the areas of all the discs is finite.

<comment><USER13> Take a set of discs with radii 1/n. Their total area is finite but the sum of radii is infinite, so we can just use them to cover the X and Y axes. Yeah, this is pretty similar to Gabriel's horn.</comment></comment>


Mendeley comes out of stealth with its "Last.fm for academic research" - <AUTHOR> http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/mendeleys-klingon-battle-cruiser-de-cloaks-in-london-with-the-lastfm-for-academia/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty sad that we (researchers, academics) need a startup and $2M for this. You could do it for free by adding some basic voting and commenting features to arxiv.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could somebody explain what this is without the "last.fm" analogy, since I don't have the foggiest idea what "last.fm" is.

<comment><USER4> When you use Last.fm and install their software thingy, it tracks what music you are playing on your computer. (I think its called "scrobbling" or something).

I think the analogy is that their software will show what papers you have on your computer, which would indicate that you have read them and might reference them.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Color me paranoid, but I would never install a program that looks at my HD and reports aspects of its contents to someone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just tried it out and the interface is a bit clunky, but I like the idea. Indexing was far from perfect, and haven't tried out recommendations yet.

However, in general, the idea of doing passive (meaning, implicitly gathered) collaborative filtering / recommendations on research is something that I find interesting, being a recommender systems mensch and all. This is one of the problems I'd like to see solved as a way of pulling in research that's in my field that I'm not yet familiar with, so I hope it works out for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> They haven't implemented the killer feature yet... the ability to highlight and annotate documents, and share those highlights. For instance, you read a paper and find some portion interesting, I want see that portion and then if I need more info I can read the whole thing.

Also, I want them to integrate with the university library system like google does so that I can get authenticated access to the documents.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks pretty cool; but the name first made me think of Mendeleyev and Mengele. The first one's probably not too bad, but the second one might create the wrong mental picture when you're talking about research.

Of course, I'm not great with naming domains myself, so maybe I'm the only one who would think that.

<comment><USER7> I think it's supposed to be Gregor Mendel, the Belgian monk who did experiments on peas to identify heritable traits. Pair a tall bean with another tall bean, you get a long offspring bean. This is where the phrase mendelian genetics comes from, and that's what I thought they named the company after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> doesn't work for either AMS journals or front.arxiv You may as well just use evernote's webclipping service, 'cause honestly if you're doing research and you don't know what your target community is, nor do you know who to ask for good papers to read, you probably shouldn't be doing research in that area

</comment><comment><USER9> Independent observation: somebody really should provide a free database of academic papers. I'm graduating soon and not looking forward to paying ridiculous $29.95 a la carte fees.

<comment><USER3> In some areas, it is common for the researchers to put their papers up on their web pages or on the ArXiv. Alternatively, just write to the author. They will send you a copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...or write to anyone who is at a university. Skype / IRC are my standard mechanisms for such. I can usually get most papers inside of 10 minutes by pinging a couple people.</comment></comment></comment>


Ways to Make Money When You're Banned from Google AdSense - <AUTHOR> http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/2010/09/8-ways-to-make-money-now-that-were-banned-from-adsense/

<comment><USER2> I was banned from Google Adsense about a week before I was to receive my first $100 pay check. I have estimated that if I was not banned I would have easily made over $10k in ad revenue over the last 3 years.

I still have no idea why I was banned. I believe it was either I had my Google Ad banner a little to close to my Flash Game, hence, they thought I was trying to trick people into clicking the Ad. Or they did not like the fact that my page had no "content" in their mind because it was just a Flash Game. Also, I was banned about a week after I had a 5 times increase in traffic because I was promoting my game on forums so that might have had something to do with it.

The thing that I am pissed about now is the fact when I was banned only my Domain was banned but I just recently found out my entire Google account is banned from ever using AdSense for different domains.

If anyone is interested I can post the website and my appeal emails to Google.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about when you're me and you sell firearms, ammunition and firearm accessories? You're banned until you have enough money to pay them. It can be frustrating.

Edit: I'd love to hear some alternative options on how to advertise on large networks (small firearm only networks haven't done much).

<comment><USER4> advertise something else then upsell them on your site

i.e. buy advertising for your "i love guns" line of tshirts

then on your sales page say "get this shirt free with a purchase of any gun"...then list 5 most commonly bought guns with your prices.

another option is to just skip the middle man. Do a google search for high converting terms. i.e. "best gun for self defense"...then see if the first site is privately owned. If it's an enthusiast site, contact them via whois and offer a few bucks for advertising. $100/yr will work for most people. This way it's like you are the first result, which = decent traffic. Just make a flashy ad that gets people's attention...and offer them a deal. And you'll have decent CTR, and decent conversions...all for the cost of 30-40 Google clicks which might get you a single sale.

<comment><USER5> Don't do the upsell thing, Google will perceive it as cloaking and will kill your account very quickly.

Contacting site owners is a good idea though, it's a simplified version of media buys. You don't need to pay CPM or use an adserver, just whip up a simple PHP/javascript code to rotate banners and track clicks and offer to pay them monthly to split test your code with their existing banners.

<comment><USER4> at worst Google would just reject the ad. It's worth trying.

another option is to use Google to get the people on the list...then upsell them through the emails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Google bans people, then isn't this exploitable for others to use against competition/people/dissenters?</comment>


Computing in the Soviet Space Program (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/soviet/index.htm <comment><USER2> A very interesting essay about the possible reasons for the technological choices of US and SSSR space programs: [https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/...](https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/soviet/essays/essay- ponomareva.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> > RAM capacity - 128 14-bit words, ROM capacity - 4,096 17-bit words.

I don't think it can run Electron.

<comment><USER4> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News so we don't have to ban you again?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Python for Reverse Engineering 1: ELF Binaries - <AUTHOR> https://icyphox.sh/blog/python-for-re-1/ <comment><USER2> > I'm not sure why it uses puts here? I might be missing something; perhaps > printf calls puts.

It's because you passed a constant string to printf, so the compiler decided it was not worth making the call and used puts instead.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I'd actually figured that out a little while after publishing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In general though, dealing with binary data in python isn't particularly intuitive.Also many python tutorials and books fails to mentioned how to manipulate binary data. I feel that is one of the places where the standard library is not that rich.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. The struct and array (not Numpy) modules are pretty great at cutting up binary data. You provide a format string and it just works.

<comment><USER4> I thought, the format string is unintutive if there are nested binary structures or if there are arrays of nested binary structures.

<comment><USER5> I do wish they were combined. It would be nice to handle arrays of structs and structs of arrays more gracefully, and it's unfortunate how the format strings almost (but not really) agree with each other.

And so long as I'm asking for ponies, it would also be nice if they handled complex numbers gracefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just for me or is the scroll on this site horrible broken? Shame because the content looks great.

<comment><USER7> Default behaviour seems to be overridden. I read the article and would recommend you look past the scrolling. If you are on an iDevixe, reader mode will help!

Edit: Spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you haven't seen it, also checkout Project LIEF. It is very good indeed. We use it for a lot of post-build binary verification in the conda ecosystem.

Windows, macOS and Linux are all supported.

[https://lief.quarkslab.com/](https://lief.quarkslab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm the author of this post. Feel free to ask questions, if any.

<comment><USER9> Hey. In your C code, you write to memory beyond what you malloc'd. You malloc'd 9 bytes for 'pw', but later do "pw[9] = '\0'", which accesses the 10th byte, which doesn't belong to you.

<comment><USER10> malloc allocates aligned memory [1], so technically it's correct that he writes past the allocated memory, but technically it's also impossible for that write to fail _or_ for that write to overwrite something else.

[1] bonus point: for what kind of alignment? (The minimum is quite well specified, for C standards)

<comment><USER11> [https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Aligned-M...](https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Aligned- Memory-Blocks.html)

"The address of a block returned by malloc or realloc in GNU systems is always a multiple of eight (or sixteen on 64-bit systems)."

I was about to say, "what if they're on a 32-bit system and so were only allocated one 8-byte block?" but then realized that since they'd requested 9 bytes, they'd be given two 8-byte blocks, or one 16-byte block on a 64-bit system. Is that right?

<comment><USER11> Well, I guess alignment doesn't say anything about how large of a block is allocated.... And this is the clearest source I can find, which says 32 bytes. [https://prog21.dadgum.com/179.html](https://prog21.dadgum.com/179.html)

<comment><USER10> > Well, I guess alignment doesn't say anything about how large of a block is > allocated

It tells you where something can't be, and because virtual memory is allocated in whole pages the "padding" so to speak will always be accessible.

There's also the obvious truism that if you can access something in a cache line, all addresses in the cache line are safe to access. (Vectorized algorithms frequently implicitly rely on this for short reads, IOW there is no way reading a 128 or 256 bit vector can fault if just reading the first lane would not fault).

<comment><USER2> > Vectorized algorithms frequently implicitly rely on this for short reads

This is _extremely_ processor-dependent and you should not be writing C if you're relying on this.

<comment><USER10> > This is extremely processor-dependent

No, it's not.

> you should not be writing C if you're relying on this.

Luckily you are in no position to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I misunderstood the context of that statement and was thought you were talking about vectorized algorithms exploiting out-of-bounds reads in general, which is pretty dependent on the processor as to when it will work (depending on how page boundaries and cache lines are set up). And I didn't really mean my statement about using C in the prescriptive way you seem to have taken it: I was merely trying to say that you should probably be using assembly in this case, because you are relying on details of your processor that your compiler is likely to be unaware about and may penalize you for. For example, the vectorized string routines in libSystem _do_ overshoot the end of the string because they use pcmpeqb, and it is written in assembly because it relies on alignment guarantees that are difficult to express in C. Plus it guarantees vectorization ;)

<comment><USER10> Ah, true, it is my turn to apologize then for interpreting your post in a rather uncharitable way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat!

You can see some similar code I wrote in Rust here: [https://github.com/monocasa/exeutils](https://github.com/monocasa/exeutils)

<comment><USER3> Nice. I've been planning to rewrite `readelf(1)` in Nim, I'll check out your code for some pointers :)

<comment><USER12> Word, you should check out the backing library I wrote too then.

[https://github.com/monocasa/exefmt](https://github.com/monocasa/exefmt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wonder why security topics never get much interest on HN. It's a huge industry with a ton of VC funding going to security startups.

<comment><USER14> For one, the article seems to be impossible to read on an iPhone via safari.

<comment><USER15> It seems to break in a different way every time I reload the page.

<comment><USER3> Mind telling me which model? Could be my my piss poor CSS acting up at that resolution.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/59658-freebsd-expands-activities-as-funds-flow-in <comment><USER2> This is great to hear. I'm a huge fan of the BSD OS's, but it's been concerning that lately FBSD seemed to be falling out of favor. Unfortunately, many 'unix' people these days have only ever worked with Linux distros. While the distro model does provide a novel approach to packaging an OS that has it's strengths, there are some downsides. I love Linux for the suppor, the rapid release cycles, and the many different approaches to things(e.g. init systems). However, sometimes I have a project that requires an OS that just works as cohesive product(eg. file server or network appliance) and FreeBSD typically fits that bill for me. The support is much more limited, but the things it does support are almost always rock solid.

<comment><USER3> The first time I really had to use a BSD (OpenBSD) system for more than some simple tasks, I was blown away. There's a definite feel of _design_ , as opposed to a large set of features and interfaces that happen to work together to varying degrees as in Linux.

And the man pages. Oh, how wondrous they were. This first thing I had to do was learn to NOT google for how to accomplish something, but just read the man page. Often, there's not much on google about something because there was no need for someone to document how they accomplished it, they just did what the man page said _and it worked_.

In linux, the man pages are generally skeletons outlining some flags and what something might support. In BSD (or at least OpenBSD) for core OS items, they are _canonical_. Compare:

      http://linux.die.net/man/8/ifconfig

      http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=ifconfig

Note: One the reasons the OpenBSD ifconfig man page is so big is because on OpenBSD ifconfig does the job of multiple Linux utils, _because it makes sense to have ifconfig control all the interface state_.

That said, I still mainly use Linux, specifically RHEL and derivatives, specifically because I think the enterprise Linux distros have a better support model for enterprise environments, where multiple machines need to be kept up to date or in sync, and you need to deploy identically (and repeatably) to systems.

Frankly, I'm surprised there's not a alternate, distro model for FreeBSD that's aimed at the enterprise to address these issues (or if there is, it's not popular enough for me to know of it). Maybe FreeBSD as an organization is coherent _enough_ and does a _good enough_ job at support for the distro in general that there's never been enough of push to really compete in the enterprise server market. Or maybe I'm just misinformed about how much BSD is in use in the enterprise. That's always a possibility.

<comment><USER4> > Note: One the reasons the OpenBSD ifconfig man page is so big is because on > OpenBSD ifconfig does the job of multiple Linux utils, because it makes > sense to have ifconfig control all the interface state.

<https://linux.die.net/man/8/ip>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iproute2>

<comment><USER5> More addon tools simply proves the point.

Task / BSD / Linux

set ip / ifconfig / ifconfig or now "ip" which is extremely confusing

wifi / ifconfig / iwconfig

speed / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool

duplex / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool

vlan / ifconfig / vlan

wol / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool

bridge / ifconfig / brctl

link aggregation / ifconfig / flags while loading module OR use distro network config scripts and restart _all_ networking or reboot server

Want find out which nic is occupying ethX perhaps for tuning or scripting etc?

Linux = complicated, by distro/version

FreeBSD = nic by device eg em0

<comment><USER4> > Linux = complicated, by distro/version

Most Linux distros are adopting consistent naming schemes, using biosdevname algorithm, e.g.

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ConsistentNetworkDev...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ConsistentNetworkDeviceNaming)

> More addon tools simply proves the point.

I was only showing that comparing Linux's ifconfig with BSD's ifconfig is not fair, not really making any point.

I don't see how this is all that confusing though, you get ip for managing routing and iw/ethtool/etc for managing interfaces or creating interfaces on lower networking levels or device level. It's just different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Investing in staff is a primary goal for the Foundation for 2013. The staff members who have been announced so far are Konstantin Belousov and Edward Tomasz Napierała, with announcements at [http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/03/foundation- ann...](http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/03/foundation-announces- new-technical.html) and [http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/freebsd- founda...](http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/freebsd-foundation- announces-second.html) .

In the past the FreeBSD Foundation has sponsored quite a number of specifc projects; having technical staff members employed by the Foundation allows for new kinds of work to be performed. Operational tasks are one example, and include the release process, handling security issues, system testing, and maintaining project servers. Having Foundation-employed staff also provides ability to provide continuity to longer term projects that require smaller but repeated efforts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Guys if you've got some spare cash I recommend putting a bit towards having FreeBSD working flawlessly on a single well-defined desktop platform (e.g. thinkpad). It doesn't need to be fancy, but the little things like suspend- and-resume need to work correctly without tinkering. That way if someone wants to run FreeBSD, you give them a straightforward starting point. At the moment some FreeBSD fans reluctantly turn to linux for these reasons.

<comment><USER7> This is a great idea! I think it would be a waste of time for FreeBSD to take the _entire_ desktop market on -- Linux has been fighting that battle for years -- but it would be awesome if Dell/HP/Lenovo came out with a PC-BSD- based laptop with official support. (For those not familiar with FreeBSD, PC- BSD is the "Desktop" edition of FreeBSD.)

Another feature I'd really like to see the FreeBSD Foundation focus on this year is full support for Xen/KVM, with the specific goal of getting FreeBSD to be a "first-class" citizen on EC2. Interestingly, some folks from Microsoft are working on Hyper-V drivers so perhaps we'll see FreeBSD on Azure in the future.

<comment><USER6> Dell/HP/Lenovo won't do that - the most they're likely to do is half-assed support for Linux. That's why it would be neat if FreeBSD to get themselves working solidly on a single platform, because fans would have a reliable option.

<comment><USER8> Recent thinkpads recognize FreeBSD as an OS, and then promptly have tons of issues with poorly designed ACPI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FreeBSD is also participating in Google Summer of Code 2013, in case any students are considering applying to the program. The application deadline is May 3rd though (2 days from today), so if you are thinking about it you need to hurry:

<http://www.freebsd.org/projects/summerofcode.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> The one place I'd like to see FreeBSD run better is on Amazon EC2. Last I looked at the effort, it was subverting the VM mode used for Windows EC2 instances to boot FreeBSD. Unfortunately, this means paying the Windows price for instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - the Foundation is interested in ensuring FreeBSD works well in both virtualization guest and host capacities.

Newer EC2 instance types don't tie the Windows license fee to HVM mode and FreeBSD can be run on those, for no additional cost: <https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00AA25MLK>. The Foundation would like to see FreeBSD available on the other EC2 tiers without additional fees and is investigating alternate approaches there.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, while the AWS Marketplace only lists cc1.4xlarge, cg1.4xlarge, cc2.8xlarge, and hi1.4xlarge, my native-HVM AMIs also run on cr1.8xlarge, hs1.8xlarge, m3.xlarge, and m3.2xlarge.

The only instance types where you need to pay the Windows tax are m1. _, m2._ , c1.*, and t1.micro (although in some regions the Windows tax for t1.micro is free). Unfortunately, this set includes all of the smallest/cheapest instance types, and thus the ones people want to use most often...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wishlist: really looking forward for a proper binary package management (à la yum/apt) and long term releases!

<comment><AUTHOR> A much improved binary package management system, known as "pkgng," is on the horizon. More information is available at <https://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng>. Pkgng will feel very natural to anyone familiar with apt.

If you'd like an introduction to pkgng there's a video from BSDCan 2012 at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hxq7AHZ27I>, or see the README at <https://github.com/pkgng/pkgng/blob/master/README.md>.

<comment><USER11> I'm looking forward to it!

<comment><USER8> You can try it on FreeBSD-CURRENT...It's really night-and-day better than it used to be. Less underscores, and it runs about 20-40% faster than the old one even when "adding" software compiled from source (portmaster -day is almost twice as fast).

<comment><USER11> I'm using this[1], but having problems finding a binary repo where to get pkgng and the packages "ports".

[1] - [https://pub.allbsd.org/FreeBSD- snapshots/amd64-amd64/10.0-HE...](https://pub.allbsd.org/FreeBSD- snapshots/amd64-amd64/10.0-HEAD-r250041-JPSNAP/iso/FreeBSD-10.0-HEAD-r250041-JPSNAP- amd64-amd64-release.iso)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Happy to hear. With the systemd-pocalypse looming in Linux land, we who love Unix need an alternative.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand. There are lots of alternatives.

\- Aix

\- HP-UX

\- Solaris

\- Tru64

\- MacOS X

\- QNX

Or do you mean you don't pay for your OS?

<comment><USER14> I don't think any of those are Open Source. There is OpenSolaris, but you didn't list that.

<comment><USER13> The complaint was about UNIX alternatives, not free beer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those interested in FreeBSD, a couple of additional links you might enjoy:

Installing FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi:

<http://blog.khubla.com/?p=18>

Android on FreeBSD:

<http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=37527>

</comment><comment><USER15> I absolutely adore FreeBSD. I work in linux these days because it's easier to bundle and distribute an upgradeable (binary distribution) linux appliance. I will run back to FreeBSD as soon as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Once pkgng is available in a release pkgng will really improve the binary upgrade case, and the multiple repository support will also be of interest to anyone deploying an appliance using a number of stock packages and a few custom ones.

<comment><USER16> This, plus compatibility for the low-cost non-defenestrated EC2 instances will finally provide a realistic alternative to the huge farms of Ubuntu currently haunting AWS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure what the challenges involved are since I'm just a .NET guy who uses a debian home server, but I would switch to FreeBSD instantly if I could get utf-8 support in my irssi.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes I felt that the FreeBSD-Linux situation is similar to Python-Ruby.

FreeBSD/Python is more ... stable-ish and the community is calmer (or probably more mature) but the development is not as fast-pace as the Linux/Ruby counterpart.

<comment><USER19> That analogy doesn't really hold, since Python is more popular than Ruby, while FreeBSD is much less popular than Linux.

<comment><USER18> I'm surprised. I see more Ruby these days (all the online learning courses i.e.: codeacademy, etc).

Where I live, you won't have trouble finding Rails developers but not so much when it comes to Python.

Github is filled with probably more Ruby than Python.

<comment><USER20> Python is more popular, Ruby is more trendy and visible.

<http://www.langpop.com/>

[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> FreeBSD, FTW!!!</comment>


Cargill: The Worst Company in the World - <AUTHOR> https://stories.mightyearth.org/cargill-worst-company-in-the-world/ <comment><USER2> They'll do exactly as much damage as they can get away with. If there's no regulation standing in their way, or the potential profits outweigh the consequences, _of course_ they'll continue their malfeasance. I don't know why this is surprising to anyone. The nature of any corporation is to act in its own self-interest. I guess Mighty Earth is doing what they can, but it's like raking leaves in the forest, in the middle of a raging wildfire. The only way that anything is going to change is through effective regulation and credible enforcement. Trying to wheedle and cajole Cargill into growing a conscience is a manifest exercise in futility.

<comment><USER3> _If there 's no regulation standing in their way, or the potential profits outweigh the consequences, of course they'll continue their malfeasance_

Well, yes, but that's really "if voters and customers are happy" isn't it? No corporations exist in a vacuum. It's like Nike making shoes in sweatshops, people moan but buy them anyway. Voters could sort it easily by imposing punitive tariffs on any country that doesn't comply with US labor and environmental laws.

<comment><USER4> The Nike sweatshop situation is actually a counterexample to your point. People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change as well.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't seem like it.

> People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike > change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change > as well.

They realized their sales would drop unless they started spending more on manufacturing costs - which would decrease profit. Solution? Make all your competitors spend more too. That way we all make less profit, instead of me making less and everyone else taking over the market with their higher margins.

<comment><USER4> I mean, that does seem like the optimal outcome, doesn't it? Not only is Nike not using sweatshop labor, but all their competitors are also not using sweatshop labor. Did you want Nike to stop just because they felt bad, but their competitors could continue to use sweatshop labor? As you point out, that would mean that they would be pushed out of the market and we'd just have a new major corporation using sweatshop labor to be mad at.

<comment><USER5> It is a pretty good outcome. Your comment made it seem like Nike pushed other manufacturers to get better labor practices out of a desire to do good (perhaps I am reading it wrong), whereas I think what happened was that a purely-profit-driven corporation acting in its best interest ended up doing something good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Totally distracting aside: I've always felt I wish I could walk around a store with a special set of glasses on so I could apply my own personal voting filters - Chili - benefits monsanto $0.05 per can, KRAFT Foods $1 per can

etc...

I mean I have a lot of values - I buy small label organics and that does a lot, but sometimes I just want to buy cheetos- I think I would think twice if I knew my enemies were benefitting.

Honestly I thought that was one of the purposes of something like G-Glass.

Anyway - but yeah, these companies exist because even if we know they are bad - we have no way of knowing what we are buying that is making them stay in power.

Money is our voting power - and unlike presidential elections, we generally have no idea what we're voting for.

<comment><USER7> _Totally distracting aside: I 've always felt I wish I could walk around a store with a special set of glasses on so I could apply my own personal voting filters _

Oh it's worse than that. Go to your favorite restaurant (or any restaurant really) and ask if they use kosher salt. If they answer in the affirmative, ask which brand they use. Dollars to donuts it's Diamond brand.

Guess who owns Diamond?

<comment><USER8> Hah - I had to look it up (answer:Cargill). FWIW, it's good salt.

<comment><USER7> It _is_ good salt, and if memory serves the production method is patented. Even if the production were easy to reproduce, aside from boutique stuff, I typically only see Morton's and Diamond in the stores out here. Boycotting Cargill completely is a monumental task.

<comment><USER6> You know what is GOOD salt.. Costco himalayan pink salt. HOLY crap you will never go back after that. Unfortunately they dropped their tellicherry pepper. I'm still trying to find a replacement for it. But, I'm sure Cargill has its hands on Costco somehow too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent than you. Moreover, by its very nature globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so you can live in a country with relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a country with bad or no EHS rules.

There is a tradeoff between producing wealth, and trashing your environment, and I don't judge too harshly the people who want to worry about carcinogens later, once they've got enough to eat that they won't starve to death. But that tradeoff used to happen within each country. When it was poor, the production was low, and as their ability to wreck their environment scaled up, so did their wealth to afford not to.

Only globalization allows companies like this to descend with 1st World money on places with 3rd world EHS rules. Cargill and its ilk exist, because we changed the rules to make it easier for them to do this.

<comment><USER10> >Moreover, by its very nature globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so you can live in a country with relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a country with bad or no EHS rules.

It could be solved by making transitive EHS rules. I.e. rules that require the source also applying these rules. This is still some kind of rarity but they do exist. For instance for years it has been very difficult/impossible to import US meat into the EU because of that. (Mostly because of different antibiotics usage AFAIK.) To some degree such rules also exist in other industries. For example it makes little sense to import a cheaply produced car from a non-EU/non-US vendor into the EU (or probably US) because it won't match the safety regulations and would at least have to go through an expensive individual (re-)certification process, and might even need customizations for that. Of course nobody does this and people buy a cheap FIAT or VW instead.

Globalization is really nice I think because it connects countries and people through economy and thus also fostering peace. ;) It could become even much nicer by adapting regulations in the destination markets. Custom tariffs and local subsidies are another way to solve this but those are obviously much less fine-grained (25% on everything :)) and come from a time when there was no globalization. In fact the high EU subsidies on agricultural products still seem to be the reason that impede African countries to export agricultural products into the EU. On the other hand the African market is flooded with subsidised EU produce, making it hard to sell products for small farmers.

Probably markets could be far less distorted if the regulations in the industry nations would be modernized... I'm not in favour of any form of turbo capitalism but free markets cannot really be blamed for this because we don't have them anyways.

<comment><USER11> Ideal free markets simply cannot exist when the safety of people is our primary goal. I'm not sure if you meant that with the statement "because we don't have them anyways" so I'm pointing this out loud because on every discussion about regulations and free markets this is one argument I still would haven't heard a good counterpoint to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Brought to you by the Louis Dreyfus company, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Bunge, Callebaut, Glencore, Armajaro and so on...

There's a great book "Merchants of Grain" written in the 70s about the secretive foods megabusinesses. It's arguably gotten worse since then. They make oil companies look like public servants.

<comment><USER13> Oil Companies are at least marginally regulated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're actually interested in _reading_ this report as opposed to struggling through the web presentation, this is the link to the PDF:

[http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty- Earth-R...](http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-Report- Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf)

This piece did inadvertently introduce me to Shorthand, which tells me that "the world's most successful digital storytelling teams" are using it to "create simply beautiful stories using" Shorthand's "beautifully simple" story editor. I can only wonder how much more successful those teams could be if they would beautifully, simply stop.

<comment><USER15> I've never heard of shorthand before, but it seems fine to me, what's your issue with it? It works fine, and performantly, in desktop Firefox with a moderate amount of adblock/privacy extensions active. It's mostly just text that you can scroll through like any other article. It just has some semi- sticky images and a timeline widget which, to me, only add to the presentation. It's not like they're hijacking the scroll action to ruin normal browser behavior.

If it sucks on mobile, so what? Everything sucks on mobile.

<comment><USER16> It's simply not true that everything sucks on mobile. A lot of sites are much more usable than that one.

<comment><USER15> I'll rephrase: 99% of the time, the desktop version of a site is better than the mobile version in every way. This site is no exception.

I have now had a chance to see it in a mobile browser though, and yeah, it is pretty bad. Still, the desktop site is much better, as usual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did they really make the authors photo take up half the page on mobile, even while scrolling down? That is a shockingly stupid idea.

<comment> james-skemp Once you get to the actual story it goes away, at least with Brave on Android.

Very distracting, and I skipped past the foreword because of it.

<comment><USER18> But there are other images that pop up in that spot as you continue to read later sections of the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anybody else get a Bernie Sanders type of feeling from this? A throwback to older issues and older battles, not seen since the 90s? It's refreshing to see that someone still cares about the rainforests, but I don't know if it's going to stick. The energy of the environmental movement is now elsewhere; at the cosmic scale, in the fight against climate change; at the scale of smaller, practical changes, it's in things like banning plastic straws.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to know more about the five grain companies read the book Merchants of Grain. All five have very sharp elbows and only one (Bunge) is public so a lot of the wrangling goes on in private. Cargill is the largest of all of them.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just want to point out that I'm a Midwesterner and the line "drank their polluted water" is neither factual nor representative of me or any of my family or friends. There are a valid points you point out but please exclude hyperbole in your arguments.

<comment><USER22> Not sure why it's hyperbole - they never said all Midwesterners drank it, just that there were Midwesterners who drank it. And did you only drink water at home or from a bottle? If not, you can't be sure you never drank Cargill polluted waters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> looking at the pictures of the baby orangutans melts my heart. cannot help but think , we have lost all compassion as humans.

</comment><comment><USER24> What an awful company.

<comment><USER25> And what an awfully designed webpage. I'll never know why Cargill is bad simply because of this utterly incompetent web designer who is making images take up half of the page even when scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > In contrast to the oil and tobacco industries, for instance, the bad > practices documented here are not inherent to the products Cargill sells, > and are, in fact, entirely avoidable.

On the contrary, there are strong philosophical arguments that selling meat and eggs, as Cargill does, is 'inherently' immoral.

<comment><USER27> Okay... then lay it on us? If there's a strong moral argument maybe you should tell us.

<comment><USER26> Here are a couple of links. The basics are that animals, like humans, have moral status and thus we are not justified in unnecessarily bring harm to them through practices like egg farming and cattle farming. Cargill's agriculture practices are a far far far way from the ideal farming scenarios described in the common "Happy Cows" argument. It's pretty clear that even if their meat wasn't poisoning people, their production of it would still be immoral.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral- animal/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4i0iqx/wh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4i0iqx/what_are_the_best_arguments_in_favor_of_meat/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Globalization is inevitable. Death by self-induced extinction is not.

</comment><comment><USER29> Never heard of it. I suppose that's intentional.

</comment><comment><USER30> Seriously? Worst company in the world? Come on. They're responding to demand. If Cargill doesn't buy the palm oil, another importer/distributor will. Sure, educate customers regarding the impacts of their purchases, but "worst company in the world" is just trolling. It's this kind of partisan over-the-top hyperbole that turns people off and, IMHO, gets dudes like Trump elected.

<comment><USER31> Voting for a racist that puts babies in concentration camps is a fairly extreme overreaction to someone criticizing the environmental impact of a company to say the least.

<comment><USER32> Babies in concentration camps? I thought it was all brown people in ovens and all women in kitchens.

<comment><USER33> Please don't use HN for partisan flamewar. It's exactly the opposite of what this site is for.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The basis for this claim seems to hinge on the facts that Cargill is a) big and b) privately owned, both of which are sins in today's political orthodoxy.

As a Minnesotan, I was wondering how long it would take before someone would notice them and shift their attention from Koch, but it had to happen at some point.

<comment><USER35> No it doesn't. The basis of the claim is a set of clearly communicated shortcomings.

<comment><USER34> And it completely ignores what the company has done for Minneapolis and the surrounding area. But it's easy to disregard local knowledge when Internet outrage is the preferred reaction.

<comment><USER36> Then please inform us what the local benefits are that justify a global history of forced child labor, slavery, dumping toxic waste, poisoning food products, etc, etc?

<comment> duncan-donuts As a Minnesotan, probably nothing. Jobs? It's probably the only argument one could make, but I'm not going to make it. It wouldn't make me sad if Cargill stopped exploiting everyone and everything.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will the recorded music industry ever grow again? - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of-music/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: \- Streaming music service pricing models net out significantly higher that consumers have been traditionally willing to pay for music \- Music label dynamics will make it difficult for streaming services to lower prices</comment>


Apple Sales Gain Slowest Since '09 as Competition Climbs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-23/apple-s-holiday-sales-miss-predictions.html

<comment><USER2> I have no knowledge of the financial world, so maybe someone can help me with this and what it means... Apple is now a $50b/quarter company, with a $480b (edit: now $430b) market cap and $140b in cash. Surely this means that, within a few years, Apple will have enough cash to buy itself? This seems like a dangerous situation for a company to be in.

For whatever reasons, there seems to be little confidence in Apple lately, but it can't be denied that they're still making substantial growth quarter over quarter. Is this current situation not unsustainable?

Edit: thanks everyone for the explanations, it's very much appreciated

<comment><USER3> Fast forward a few years to a hypothetical future where Apple is the _exact_ same company but with $500b in cash.

All other things being equal, their stock will be more valuable (and hence market cap higher) because each share also controls a share of all that cash. If they have more cash than market cap, something is wrong. Either you should buy Apple, or they have a lot of debt.

<comment><USER4> True -- although in that hypothetical situation, there'd be a lot of pressure to raise the dividend. Investors don't want to have money in such a cash-heavy company, because it's like investing in a mutual fund that takes half your money and sticks it under a mattress. Even if they do good things with the other half of your money (like Apple does) you're halving your potential return right off the bat. Cash in the bank is useful when you need liquidity (unprofitable, danger of recession, potential acquisitions, etc) but $500B is still too high for any of those needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone's confused by the stock price, it's simple. Profits are flat since this time last year. This time last year the stock was around $420 and that's where the stock is heading today.

<comment><USER6> Google's profits were nearly flat since this time last year, yet they're up 25%.

<comment><USER7> Over the past year, Apple has shown (slight) vulnerability, whereas Google has looked like an even more formidable competitor moving forward

<comment><USER8> What is this assumption based on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It also recorded its largest quarterly revenue.

</comment><comment><USER10> We've seen this before, we'll see this again.

Apple may do better in tablets than Samsung, or Microsoft, or LG, or Toshiba, or whoever. Apple may do better in phones than Nokia. Apple may do better in laptops than Dell or Asus.

Sadly, that isn't enough--with sufficiently tight margins, they need to do better than !Apple (better than all competitors, not any competitor), and in the long run, that's not going to happen. They're going to get pushed out by more competitors in hardware, and honestly I don't think their software play is good enough to save them.

<comment><USER11> I agree. Unless their software engineering improves pronto they are in trouble. Hardware in this market is headed for commodification.

It's still their game to lose but they really need to nail a lot of things in iOS 7 and so far I don't see any sign of the kind of leadership that would require.

<comment><USER12> > so far I don't see any sign of the kind of leadership that would require.

As of 29 October 2012 - Eddy Cue in charge of maps/cloud services, Craig Federighi in charge of iOS/OSX, Jony Ive in charge of human interface and hardware design. It'll be interesting to see how iOS 7 pans out, because these guys are very good at what they do.

<comment><USER11> Ive is a brilliant hardware designer but software UX is a whole different ballgame and his ability there is currently a big question mark. Cue and Federighi were both on board when a number of architecturally questionable APIs were added (Storyboards, AutoLayout), so they're a bit of an unknown too. That's why there's so much riding on iOS 7.

Contrast this to Google which has a strong, stable team in place that's been doing superb work for the last few Android releases and you can see why people are a little gun shy about APPL right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When homework is busywork (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-mar-22-me-homework22-story.html <comment><USER2> >Vatterott questioned the quantity and the quality of assignments. If 10 math problems could demonstrate a child's grasp of a concept, why assign 50, she asked? The solution, she said, was not to do away with homework but to clarify the reasons for assigning it.

Because repetition is important, especially in math. You don't learn something by doing it once, you must do it over and over again.

<comment><USER3> Is it really? I think repetition is dangerous, it might give you the impression that you understand something when in fact you only learned how to follow a specific formula.

What you need in math is lots of unique problems to solve, not repetition of the same equation with different constants.

<comment><USER4> Unless you are a math prodigy, drills are paramount to understanding the concepts, especially before about high school. Almost no one needs deep understanding _why_ three and four make seven, or _why_ long division works. But if they cannot call upon these elementary tools on demand, in an instant, they will be flummoxed in later math classes. Hence, drilling until they've nailed it.

<comment><USER3> But the problem is that we spend ~9 years on those drills which is more time than a typical engineering student spend on algebra and above. How come we can teach so much higher math in such a short amount of time? It is not possible from scratch, the reason we can do it is because some bored students played around with the drills instead of just doing them and thus learned a lot of related concepts which are cached in on in later years.

The losers are those who just spent years learning how to do the drills, getting good grades but didn't learn anything worthwhile at all. It would be good if we could catch those and correct their behavior before they had wasted 9 years on it, but as is we don't notice that most students fail to learn anything before we test them on more interesting problems in high-school.

Note: I am not saying that we shouldn't teach arithmetic, on the contrary I'd argue that arithmetic is one of the most important things to learn in math since everything else is built on top of that intuition. We just have to realize that we practice arithmetic to build intuition and not to become a human calculator.

<comment><USER5> An engineering student can learn more advanced math in a shorter time because a) they're older, b) they have mastered the elementary stuff already.

<comment><USER6> Also let's be honest, how many engineers actually learn the more advanced math. Most of them cram it into their brain for the test and then promptly forget it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the perfect opportunity to test some anecdata of mine: I'm hard pressed to think of a more anti-homework audience than programmers.

An absurd percentage of programmers I met hated homework and did their best to do as little of it as possible.

Is my grouping just weird or are most programmers deeply homework averse?

<comment><USER8> Can confirm, hated homework. I understood things too quickly so I never had push myself to learn, thus homework felt like a chore or a petty punishment.

This burned me later in life because "remembering what the teacher said yesterday" and "using other test questions to answer the current question" only gets you so far.

<comment><USER9> I write my tests specifically so previous test questions do not answer future test questions on the same test. It's interesting how many "A students" get B's and C's on the first few tests I give...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The thing is: homework can be a rather powerful tool for learning. Students works on their own. In their own environment and at their own pace. They are usually done hours to days after the lesson was teached, so it gets better remembered. They provide an easy interface for parents to help their kids. They are not bound on the time limits of school lessons. And finally they take some churn (and boredom for faster students) out of the classroom.

All in all, it would be criminally stupid to outright ban homework.

If the problem is workload, which is just too understandable, then an agreed upon effort limit seems reasonable. But that would require teachers to coordinate.

<comment><USER11> > The thing is: homework can be a rather powerful tool for learning.

Not for everyone. Once you've understood something, doing it 10 times won't help. Especially if you could do something more fun on the side.

I think it is just a symptom of the inability of teachers to adapt their teaching to their students. Some children will be able to learn something if it is presented some way. For the other? Just make them do homework, don't try to present things another way.

> They provide an easy interface for parents to help their kids.

Which is a good way to amplify the problems for people whom parents can't afford the time or never got the education to be able to help.

<comment><USER10> > Not for everyone.

Except for some rare counterexamples, it does.

> Once you've understood something, doing it 10 times won't help.

That is simply not true. Repitition helps to strengthen memory. Even if you understand something now, it does not necessarily mean you will still understand it tomorrow or next week. Repitition as a homework is actually a simple and efficient method to increase the likelihood that knowledge will be remembered.

> Which is a good way to amplify the problems for people whom parents can't > afford the time or never got the education to be able to help.

This is also quite wrong. Do you really think it helps children that suffer from a lack of parental support if more children artificially suffer the same? Children need every little bit of support they can get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More and more people every year turn into freelance mode of work. This is an inevitable trend, and I'm talking not only about Uber drivers. Programmers, writers, journalists, designers, many people who need a computer and a cup of coffee. Read this PDF from Zerocracy, they nailed it there: [http://papers.zold.io/freelance-deck.pdf](http://papers.zold.io/freelance- deck.pdf)</comment>


Duck typing considered harmful - <AUTHOR> http://programmers-dojo.blogspot.com/2012/05/duck-typing-considered-harmful.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't fully agree with the author, but his position did make me reflect a bit on some of the python codebases I work with on a day to day basis.</comment>


"We are failing to foster intellectual skills that liberate student minds" - <AUTHOR> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414351&c=1

<comment><USER2> What does that even mean in non-education-theory-speak?</comment>


Show HN: Realtime group chat app using GraphQL with ZERO back end code - <AUTHOR> https://chat-example-trial-roar.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Not having to write a backend sounds alluring. If I were to extend your app, where would I put authentication and permission checks, and input validation (so no crummy input can be saved to the database)? Right now, every client effectively has full control over the database, correct?</comment>


Ask HN:applications you would love to see in cell phones - <AUTHOR>

what cell phone application would you want to use which require a good deal of computing power(using parallel computing or other).I myself would like to implement many basic photoshop image enhancement features for images taken in cellphones on cellphones.<p>My objective is to build an application which uses the gpus processing power as in parallel computing,eg. joining large images together on a cellphone itself. <comment><USER2> I really want an interface designed with usability in mind. Things like:

* No common task should require more than 3-4 keypresses you can easily remember. Arrow keys count. Corollary: navigate the menus with the number keys; shortcuts, ...

* Incremental search to look up contacts with (like emacs C-s)

* Operate without looking. In particular, there should be a way to get to "home" from an arbitrary state, options have a "return to default" key, all important menus stay the same, anything common/important can also be done by keyboard.

* Typing speed. With slow input, calendar functions etc are nearly useless. Unfortunately, the fastest solution, qwertz keyboards, still sell at a premium. Perhaps there is a way to optionally emulate a chorded keyboard on standard 12-key hardware? It should have some form of visual feedback enabled by default, like Apple's keyboard overview.

* Reliable Sync. Even with 348 contacts, 1000s of appointments, international characters. The point is reliably correct - everything I have had so far has messed up eventually.

* Todo list and calendar 2 taps/clicks away, such as for a shopping list

Besides, I'd like some gimmicks:

* Adjust lighting / color hue / contrast on images, cut them down to an image section. Cut videos to save space and improve art.

* Easy file sync, regardless of file format

* Track location over time and tag photos. Even if there is no GPS hardware, cell towers broadcast their ID (or location), and modern phones have an acceleration sensor.

* A 3-touch way to keep track of my money / time.

* Office to go

* Flashlight mode. Display lighting is usually bright enough to find the key hole, stuff I have dropped,...

I admit you asked about computationally intense applications, but this is what bothers me most about my gadgets.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like some decent Augmented Reality apps/games, proper AR rather than the barcode based stuff. Something that could recognise an environment and overlay cool stuff. A decent camera, GPS, compass and good processing power are all required. Figure between G1 and iPhone 3 we might be getting there.

<comment><AUTHOR> what specifically in augmented reality?

<comment><USER3> Check out some of the demos on the <http://www.tinmith.net> site, or <http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/Projects/>. I love the demo where a group of people draw on a virtual map and the person on campus sees the draw arrows to guide them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link,pretty cool stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't really require a huge amount of computing power, but I always thought that a dating / matching application that ran in the background on a phone would be pretty cool.

It would probably work best in places with good public transportation, or other reasons for people to be in relatively close proximity to each other. Then when a good match was within X distance, you'd get a notification saying a match was nearby; and if you both had a minute you could meet RIGHT NOW.

<comment><USER5> funny I actually saw a mock app on Tv (Bones). Hate or Date I think it was called and did just that. Very cool idea.

Another TV inspired phone app (Fringe) could listen to a phone dialing numbers and turn around and call the number for you, based on the tones of the numbers in the phone number. Cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Universal translator * 2\. Scale 3\. way to measure calories 4\. Always listening so I can ask it questions and have it google them for me and read out the answers. All without taking it out of my pocket.

* Honestly I'd be happy with a good enough approach here. Just recognize whatever words it can (even 10% or less) and show the google translate translations scrolling down my screen. If I can just discern the subject of a conversation once in a while, I'm still way better off than understanding nothing.

<comment><USER7> I would want a translator to be offline though (or someone else to pay the roaming data charges for me).

<comment><USER6> ok done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg When Flash gets there, I want a flash blocker to be ready.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd really like a complex and easy to use "personal assistant", with voice recording/voice recognition in addition to typing. Something where I can press at most two-three keys and record "milk" to the shopping list or "Mail X about the problem Y" to the TODO list.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about an audio 'twitter'.. I can leave short voice messages for people, or for a group.

twaudio? tweaker? ugh.. I had naming things after popular web sites.

</comment><comment><USER10> Analytics of Phone usage. Graphs showing time and money spent on the phone.

<comment><USER11> t-mobile provides an app for that. Its in the G1 Android Market

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Free calls</comment>


Smooth scroll to the top with pure JavaScript (duration, linear, ease-in, ease-out, ..) - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/dsheiko/pen/XZEgXW <comment><USER2> This seems to be a new programmer fad. Since the 90s... 'smooth scrolling' has ben some goal. But only to designers. Users dont care. In fact, the extra complexity usually adds uncertianty to scrolling that users hate. If you arent coding some immersive game, let the os/wm/codebase do it. Stop touching your face.</comment>


A telescope that tells you when to look up - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/march-2015/a-telescope-that-tells-you-when-to-look-up

<comment><USER2> The amount of data this is going to generate is tremendous. In the range of 15 tb per day. I am curious as to how this is all going to be processed and stored.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Google shaping search results for Aurora Store users? - <AUTHOR> I noticed today anonymous users attempting to search for "MEGA" (the encrypted cloud storage app) on the Aurora Store [1] see not the app with 627K downloads, but the one one with 1K downloads [2]. What do you see?<p>[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/ [2] https://t.me/afterdarkhugo/9673 <comment><AUTHOR> Tricky, but if you input "megasync" into Aurora Store the MEGA app will show up for anonymous Play Store download.</comment>


Ask HN: Drones for lost pets? - <AUTHOR> A vet just came up to me and told me about a lost dog in my area in Brooklyn. I was wondering, how feasible would it be to have a drone with computer vision locate a lost pet? I guess we would have to model animal behavior as well to estimate flight path. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Currently drones have restrictions from the FAA that would make this fairly difficult. One regulation is that you must fly with line of sight, meaning the pilot or a spotter must see the drone at all times. If you can see the drone you'll probably be able to see the dog. I would say revisit this idea once we have true autonomous drones.</comment>


Tynt: What's being copied from your website right now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tynt.com/

<comment><USER2> From their about page: _Tracer inserts a java script tag into the html code of your website to non-invasively track users interactions with your website content. The only change the user sees is when copied content is pasted into an email, blog or website, we automatically add a link back to the originating site at the end of the content._

What happens if the user just deletes the link, as I have with the above quote?

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure this service is not meant for the technically inclined. If someone who _is_ technically inclined was worried about this, they would understand that they could use Google and/or a custom web crawler that searched over a subset of sites you cared about[1].

[1]After all, if someone copies your work and no once sees it, who really cares? The scope of your web crawler must be limited somehow. You could simply have it check up on your competition and/or popular links on news aggregating sites for categories related to your business. For example, if I was starting a technology blog, I could write up a Python crawler in about 30 minutes that parsed through blog articles on other popular tech blogs with related tags.

<comment><USER2> I think that there is a difference between services not meant for technically inclined people and those built by non-technically inclined people. In its current incarnation, I do not see how this service is useful, even if you are not technically inclined.

I think there is a need for a service like this (that watches the web for people republishing your content), but Tracer is not it. Tracer is just a silly JavaScript hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Years ago I applied a trick I learned from the Associated Press. Back in World War I, the Associated Press suspected that the Hearst newspaper chain was copying their stories from the Russian front, and they began running stories about a fictitious general Nelotsky. When the Hearst newspapers picked up the Nelotsky "story," the AP called them on it, pointing out that the first part of the general's name is just the English word "stolen" spelled in reverse. I used a similar technique on my most plagiarized webpage,

<http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html>

mentioning a college that doesn't actually exist, but has a name from the Greek word for "steal." That finally got one persistent thief to acknowledge that my site was his source.

<comment><USER5> Map makers (at the street level) did a similar thing.

<comment><USER6> Although some of those ghost streets were simply city projects gone wrong (ran out of money/support), so only some errors on maps are traps.

There is one (somewhat) famous example of a trap, in the placement of two fictitious towns in Michigan, Goblu and Beatosu (this being back in the day of their rivalry).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These guys are not fans <http://www.ericlander.com/324.html>

<comment><USER8> Looks to me like Tynt is trying to head in a new direction with Tracer. I don't see any references on their homepage to the sort of technology that these guys are concerned about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great idea! Now we can finally, with accuracy, determine what portion of the internet population uses the click-drag technique when reading long blog posts. Yeah!

<comment><USER10> i believe this still works with copy (apple-c) and paste (apple-p), which i do all the time. not just click-drag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting concept, but this is not designed to find where your content has been copied onto other sites/blogs. That would be an cool service.

<comment><USER12> That service is called Google.

<comment><USER13> And if you're looking for a slightly more scalable solution than "Find a sentence from Page A which is juicy, Google it, record results, repeat for all 10,000 pages on my website", you may be interested in CopyScape.

For example, if you feed them www.tynt.com, they'd tell you that feedmyapp.com has borrowed a few sentences from them. (It makes sense, as the borrowed phrases are part of a listing for tynt.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> i use <http://copygator.com> but am interesting in how tynt solution differs

<comment><USER15> Copygator actually crawls the internet looking for your blog posts. All Tracer does is sniff for a ctrl-c command from someone visiting your website and injects a link into the copied text.</comment></comment>